HANG ON

As Atlantis hurtled toward Mir today, a Canadian astronaut performed some high altitude construction to prepare for the docking. "Chris Hadfield pulled the five-ton docking module out of the payload bay of the shuttle and, with a fifty-foot crane, maneuvered it onto the top of the shuttle craft," says Hannifin. "All this at 17,500 miles per hour and 250 miles above the earth. It's unprecedented in terms of pulling off a giant construction project in space."